Development and widespread use of Internet have brought various kinds of online services, one of which is a search service.
Typically, the search service is provided such that a query is inputted by a service user and search results in response to the query are provided. More specifically, a service provider builds a database with webpages pre-stored by each index. When the service user requests a search service, the service provider searches the webpages stored in the database, and provides corresponding search results to the service user.
However, the prior art search service providing method has disadvantages. For example, it performs a search process for all of the pre-stored webpages even though a target webpage has been changed. Thus, the search results provided to the service user may include webpage(s) irrelevant to the search query by the service user or webpage(s) having been deleted.
In more detail, as shown in FIG. 1A, when the service user inputs a search query (4) of “beautiful man and beautiful success,” the search results obtained in response to the search query is provided to the service user. Then, when the service user selects any one of link information from the obtained search results, the webpage corresponding to the selected link information is displayed.
However, when the webpage corresponding to the selected link information has been deleted or a server of providing the corresponding webpage has a problem, a webpage informing that the corresponding webpage cannot be provided is displayed on a screen, as shown in FIGS. 1B to 1D. In this case, FIG. 1B is a screen provided when the first link information (6) is selected from FIG. 1A; FIG. 1C is a screen provided when the second link information (8) is selected from FIG. 1A; and FIG. 1D is a screen provided when the third link information (9) is selected from FIG. 1A.
As such, the service user may waste its time and feel inconvenience on unnecessary search, which in turn may cause mistrust of the service provider.
The above information disclosed in this Background Art section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.